We investigate a possible universal constraint on spatial meaning. It has been proposed that people attend preferentially to the endpoints of spatial motion events, and that languages may therefore make finer semantic distinctions at event endpoints than at event beginnings. We test this proposal. In Experiment 1, we show that people discriminate…

Words associated with perceptually salient, highly imageable concepts are learned earlier in life, more accurately recalled, and more rapidly named than abstract words (R. W. Brown, 1976; Walker & Hulme, 1999). Theories accounting for this concreteness effect have focused exclusively on semantic properties of word referents. A novel possibility is…

Traces the history of glottal sounds in humans, and examines some of the functions of the glottal stop in modern languages, particularly French. (AM)

Analysis of the structural, semantic, and textual aspects of a corpus of 330 English examples of the postpositive conjunctions "though,""as," and "that" focuses on concessive clauses, clauses of reason, clauses of manner, and clauses with postpositive conjunctions and normal clauses. (CB)

IN ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES THE TECHNIQUE OF COMPONENTIAL ANALYSIS (TAKEN FROM THE FIELD OF FORMAL SEMANTICS) IS APPLIED TO A SET OF TERMS WHICH FORM A CULTURALLY RELEVANT DOMAIN. THIS METHOD PROCEEDS BY RECOGNIZING SEMANTIC DISTINCTIONS (COMPONENTS) WHICH APPORTION THE TERMS OF THE SET INTO CONTRASTING SUB-SETS SUCH THAT EVERY ITEM IS…

Examines the syntactic and semantic relationship between verb forms I and II in modern standard Arabic. The main function of form II verbs was causative/factitive, with the core elements of the causative including (1) agent-subject, (2) action-process verb, and (3) patient-object. (CB)

Are words read visually (by means of a direct mapping from orthography to semantics) or phonologically (by mapping from orthography to phonology to semantics)? The authors addressed this long-standing debate by examining how a large-scale computational model based on connectionist principles would solve the problem and comparing the model's…

Paper prepared during a workshop conducted by Joseph E. Grimes, January-April 1971, at Ukarumpa, Territory of New Guinea, and partially supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation. (DD)

Comparison of the 1970 and 1984 editions of a Spanish dictionary regarding the accommodation of female counterparts of traditionally male occupations found such adjustments as use of the feminine article "la" and the suffixes "-a" and "-nta." Other nouns proved to be particularly resistant to such accommodation. (CB)

Revised version of a paper presented at the Seventh International Conference on Salish Languages, Bellingham, Washington, August 1972; research supported by the Research Council of the University of Massachusetts, the Society of Sigma Xi, and the American Council of Learned Societies. (DD)

Based in part on an M.A. thesis presented to the University of Illinois by Mr. Harris; deixis refers to those words which have a demonstrative or pointing function, e.g., the pronouns this'' or that''. (DD)